Critical junctures refer to those historical moments of great crisis when traditional institutions and practices are discredited and the range of reforms is far broader than usual. In such periods of crisis – e.g. the United States in the 1930s – crucial decisions are made that will lock the nation on a path that will likely last for generations. Reconstruction was another such era in U.S. history.

Sports teams have their versions of critical junctures, too. For our purposes, these occur most importantly when a championship contender is losing its status as a genuine contender and the team’s GM is left with a wide range of options for which course to pursue. The team often has important assets. The options range from doing nothing and hoping to luck into another title, strategically using trades and the draft to retool around most of the core, all the way to blowing the team up, trading away assets for young players and draft choices, and hoping to clear cap space for veteran stars and/or getting a high lottery pick. The decisions made during a team’s critical juncture will put them team on its course for a good decade if not longer. For sports fans, this is the single most important moment for the team’s GM.

Celtics fans have been spoiled as a rule.

Red Auerbach faced three great critical junctures; when Bill Russell was added to the mix in 1956, when Russ retired in 1969, and then after John Havlicek retired and his core aged in the late 1970s.

In the first instance, Red brilliantly understood he needed to get a defensive center to elevate his slightly above-average team to legitimate championship contention. He made a trade for the ages.

In the second instance, Red drafted Don Chaney, Jo Jo White and Dave Cowens in consecutive years and corralled Paul Silas is a steal from Phoenix. The Cs had but one losing season and were two-time champions in the early to mid 1970s.  

In the third instance, Red drafted Larry Bird and then brilliantly traded for Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. The 1980s Cs were one of the great teams in NBA history, winning three flags. Again there were only two seasons with losing records separating the Hondo-Cowens teams from the Bird era.

The critical juncture following the slow descent of the Bird-McHale teams in the late 1980s and early 1990s was not so kind to the Cs. Between 1988 and 1993 the Cs were a solid winning team, built around its aging Hall-of-Famers as well as some intriguing young players. But the team was never a serious threat to win the title. When the original Big Three were retired or over-the-hill and Reggie Lewis died in 1993, the team entered a decade long period of utter confusion as it was a regular participant in the lottery. In retrospect, it is obvious that the Cs blew opportunities to accelerate their necessary rebuilding project in the final years of the Big Three, not to mention in the incoherent years under Dave Gavitt, M.L. Carr and Rick Pitino. Until Wyc Grousbeck and Danny Ainge came along in 2003 the management of the team was completely lacking in vision.

Those are the two extremes of how to rebuild as a team loses its genuine contender status. And they are directly relevant to Danny Ainge and the Boston Celtics, circa February 2010.

The reason is clear: it is now obvious that the Boston Celtics will not win the 2010 NBA title. And their chances of winning the 2011 NBA title, as presently constituted, are even more remote. In other words, the team is no longer a genuine contender.

I do not write these words lightly. It is only in the past month that this has become clear. The primary reason is that Kevin Garnett is no longer a superstar, and he never will be again. If this were the KG of his prime – the 22ppg, 13 rpg, 6apg, 2bpg 1st team all-NBA stud for much of the past decade – the Cs would be very much in contention. But he isn’t and he never will be again. Not even close. It is unclear if he can even play more then 6-8 weeks without needing to take time off to get his knees healthy again. Sorry guys, it ain’t happening if KG is supposed to be top gun.

This throws a monkey wrench into Danny’s plans for the season and the future. The plan to date was to tweak the roster with MLE signings like Rasheed Wallace, and build around the same starting five that won the title in 2008 and may well have won it in 2009 if KG had not injured his knee. The idea, as far as we could see, was to have a rolling adjustment to a team built around the emerging brilliant talent that is Rajon Rondo, one that would remain in legitimate contention for at least another year or two. At that point the team would drop it huge contracts and have plenty of cap space to sign up free agents to rebuild around Rondo and Perk.

Well so much for that plan. Now that it is clear that the team is not going to win the 2010 NBA title, the idea of just playing out the string for two or three more years makes no sense. Adding another MLE veteran like Rasheed Wallace this off-season would be an absurd waste of money. If we know nothing else about Danny Ainge it is that he is in the business of winning titles. If he is not a contender he is doing everything he can to get the Cs back to contender status. Snoozing through two or three 48-34 seasons to take a first-round playoff exit before eventually diving into the lottery is simply not an option. This team, as constituted, is heading south.

At the same time, the safe choice for the average GM is to play the pat hand and pray LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol get injured in the spring while the Cs remain healthy. My hunch is Danny aspires to something greater than mediocrity, and is willing to take risks.

There is another crucial reason for urgency. The trade deadline is very quickly approaching. The Cs currently have a whopping seven players in the final years of their deals, with a combined salary total of around $32 million. After the trade deadline the Cs will lose the ability to trade these players and most of them have little or no market value.

But for the next week the Cs will be able to find considerable interest in Ray Allen, Tony Allen, Brian Scalabrine, Marquis Daniels, Eddie House, Shelden Williams and J.R. Giddens. (Bill Walker also can be included as his minimum salary is not guaranteed after this season.) Ray Allen is the big fish here. The interest has nothing to do with the players and everything to do with the expiring nature of their contracts. Two types of teams will be especially interested. Some teams, like the Knicks and the Bulls, are desperate to clear more cap space to become bigger players in the vaunted 2010 free agent market. Many other teams, like the Sixers, Golden State and Sacramento, are desperate to dump long-term deals because their finances are in disarray.

So Danny has a unique opportunity to parlay expiring contracts for players who do not figure into the team’s future and who have little market value into some quality assets. Players that might be available include Andre Iguodala, Kevin Martin and many more.

The catch is that the Cs owners have to be willing to swallow some deals that will not taste all that great, like Sam Dalembert or Eddy Curry or Corey Maggette, in order to get the Iguodalas or Anthony Randolphs or Danilo Gallinaris. (If the owners are willing to swallow hard, they may even get some other team to take Rasheed Wallace’s now ugly deal off their hands.)

I use these names purely for illustrative purposes. If we know anything from the past, it is that the names being bandied about on the Internet and in sports media are often not the names of the players who end up being dealt. Danny, in particular, has a great ability to keep his cards very close to his chest.

The good news for Danny is that he can add one or two great young talents to the team by doing such moves and probably make the team no less competitive this season. And as a young team it could possibly even return to genuine contention by next season. (Much will depend upon Rondo and whether he develops from an all-star to an all-pro.) The key here is the willingness of the owners to accept the luxury tax hit that will ensue. Unless the owners have problems about which we do not know, they strike me as smart enough to know that in the long run these deals could go a long way toward making the team very competitive for many more years…and that not capitalizing on these expiring contracts will be a tremendous lost opportunity.

Some argue the Cs should go all the way, and blow up the team by trading KG and Pierce, too. I do not think this is necessary or would be a fruitful option. I am not certain what the market is for either of them right now. My sense is the Cs should keep them, and include them in the base that includes Rondo, Perk and whatever talent they can generate through the expiring contract trades in the next week.

The next ten days are the most important moment in Celtics history since the summer of 2007, if not longer. It is a genuine critical juncture. What Danny does and does not do will likely strongly shape the direction of the team for years. Stay tuned.